Owl Eyes
by Always Late.Texas Kate
Summary: "They had suffered enough at the hands of runaways." Leonardo is gone. Raphael learns to grieve. There is acceptance, there is love. And there are owl eyes gleaming from across the fire. 2k7verse. Raph/OC. No slash. COMPLETE.
1. Midnight Meeting

_**A/N: Texas Kate (formerly TMNT Redneck) is back! And with a story she might actually finish! Owl Eyes is going to be fairly short, and Raph centric with some appearances from the others. If this story goes well, if y'all enjoy it, there will be a sequel with some TMNT-esque action, baddies, and everything else we love about our boys in green. This story is set in the 2007 movie-verse, pre-movie. I will warn you, there are a couple mature references (nothing blatant) and a few curses that vary in severity. Without further ado, I leave you to the story with one request: PLEASE REVIEW!**_

* * *

 _Chapter One: Midnight Meeting_

The bike kept a steady hum between his legs, carrying him deeper into the cloudless April night. He clenched his fists soundlessly, felt the accelerating growl of the mechanical beast, and lost himself in the blurred stripes gleaming before his headlights. Faster. Their family had already begun to crumble. Faster. The seal was broken. Faster. Michelangelo was speechless with night terrors. Donatello was up for days on end working, tinkering, fidgeting in his caffeine-fueled trances. Splinter... The rat was sick with worry, with guilt, paced his room of a night after telling his boys he was turning in. And him... He was droning westward at eighty-ninety now, with the wind clawing at his leathers and the headlights of cars- few and far between now in this ungodly hour- in the opposite lane forming a ghostly entourage for his surreal perspective. Two hours had passed with one hundred and sixty miles. He was in Pennsylvania now, maybe close to Maryland. What did it matter now? He slowed to a reasonable pace. 'Fearless Leader' was gone now. Training.

Raphael convinced himself that the wringing coils of brotherly love, of heartache, were stabs of hatred and betrayal in his breast. His brother, his grand eldest brother, abandoning them... Now? Like this? Raphael hadn't said goodbye. He slowed, stopped the bike. Another sixty miles had come and gone. The night was dark, the highway abandoned. Above the weary turtle there stretched an infinitude of stars, winking at him from their celestial cradle. They were without a guardian, alone up there but for their infant brothers. The moon, their moon, was lost to the sky. Raphael gritted his teeth, moved to rev the engine, and caught a glimpse of orange from the shadowed trees along the road. A flash, and then another. Too early for fireflies... The ghostly lantern danced, was extinguished. The reptile shivered, killed the bike. Instinct warred with curiosity. His gut tingled in anticipation.

The bike was concealed in a dry ditch. The chase was on.

The man, the beast, the apparition- whatever had manifested itself as the slim dark shadow -was light and fast. It wove through the trees, leapt and bound like a stag, and Raphael its huntsman. The ninja had little to follow- the shifting shadow, the smooth sliding sigh of tall grass that danced in the starlight.

Close the gap. End the chase.

The turtle put more power to his legs, ran harder, faster, on the heels of his quarry until he was led to the top of a small, rocky hill and it disappeared. Raphael turned a slow circle, instincts burning, palms on the hilts of his sai, his spine itching and blood humming with the presence of the wraith.

"Leave," a low voice hissed behind him.

The murmur made him shiver, a soft and ageless sound that could have been the echo of a whisper from the dawn of time. He turned, narrowed his eyes in the weak starlight. To his surprise, there gleamed a very human pair of eyes, wide open and blank as an owl's. The human nearly rippled, evaded his punch with a backward step. The eyes narrowed, the colorless lips curled.

"Leave, I said," it snarled.

"What the hell are you?" Raphael demanded.

It took a step closer, and the turtle grimaced. The wraith reeked of sweat, of grime, of something... Something fertile, something feminine. He almost scoffed. The woman stared, but his moment of terror- worry, he would amend in later stories- had passed.

"I'll ask ya again, sweetcheeks," the terrapin snarked, crossing his arms, "who the hell are you, and what are you doin' out here?"

"I protect the park."

Raphael snorted at the pretend ghoul. The scrawny woman cod hardly feed herself- her clothes, some patched and ragged menagerie that called to mind the four hour long movie Donatello had made them watch years ago, hung about her stiff with filth and over-large.

"Look lady-" an indignant gasp cut him off. "What? Nobody ever tell ya you need a bath before?" He made a show of sniffing the air, chuckled venomously as the pallid face darkened considerably.

By now the novelty of a midnight run had worn off, and they were left two strangers disconnected from the sleeping world. There was embarrassment, frustration, impatience in the tension between them. He, the monstrous mountain of a 'man' that moved unheard and agile through the deepest brush; and she, the thin and glaring wretch that dragged him through said brush. Before the young ninja knew- far quicker indeed than he would ever admit- they were gazing at one another from across a fire.

"You're from New York," she stated, her voice soft and lofty, as though she had no real care who or what he was or where he was from.

Raphael didn't bother asking how she knew, but her next words sent a flood of panic through his system.

"What use have you there, Reptile? Do you live like I do?"

She watched him stiffen, her dark eyes burning through his visor and reflecting the orange glow of the hot barrier separating them. As he had done, she made a slow show of sniffing the air. 'You're not the only one with a sense of smell and half a brain.' She winked at him. He remained still, reading the young face, searching for the fear, the loathsome prejudice he knew must be harbored somewhere in the deep eyes. The woman stood, crept closer to him, and crouched again. She lifted her hand, a dirty and callused little thing with short, ragged nails, and it hovered near his helmet.

"Will you take it off?" The voice was soft and calm, the eyes wide and glittering grey-orange and inky black, half of the face illuminated by the ravenous flames.

His heart fluttered. Deeply sown fears- of rejection, of hatred, smothered the tiny flicker of hope. He lifted a finger in the woman's direction, a hearty 'fuck off, lady,' ripe on his tongue, when one hand joined the other. They trembled. He stilled them on the helmet, feeling the cool steel through the gloves. The helmet fell away, and his senses leapt sharper, clearer; the smell of the night, of the fire, of the girl who rocked back in her heels in marvel at the face now exposed to her. The calls of nightbirds and the popping of the fire boomed in his uncovered ears. The girl inched forward, touched his gloved hand and traced the three fingers thereupon, tugged the glove away.

His green hand was large, slightly warm with the texture of leather as it rested in her own, cool and grimy. The firelight danced across his face; frozen, stony, it flashed golden green and pale ashy grey with the musings of the fire. She traced the rough lines of his palm with a feather-light touch, exhaling in a mute wonder. The sound brought Raphael to his senses- his hand clenched as he tugged it away, giving the interloper a dark glare.

"Who the hell are you?" He snarled lowly, teeth glinting in a growl.

The spell was broken, the worn hands falling to their places and the owl-eyed wonder curling into a narrow stare.

"I protect the park," she repeated, and whether this was the second or third repetition Raphael didn't care to count.

He snapped his jaws open, a sharp remark dancing just behind his teeth, but allowed a low sigh to close them again. He turned his head, firelight painting the surrounding trees in patterns far more captivating than the hollow-cheeked ghoul. He saw a city in flames, four brothers vanishing into a bloody night. Four... Now three.

"I protect the city." The words surprised him, falling from his own tongue in a tone as grim as his thoughts.

Two protectors, staring from across the fires. A muscular brute: well versed in the ways of battle, with blood that sang to the ring of steel on steel and flesh on flesh; and the skeletal girl with her empty threats and sharp gaze. She was weaponless, where he was armed; he armored where she appeared in rags and mud. She could defend little- hardly even herself.

"They think I'm a spirit." Had he been speaking aloud? "People get superstitious so near the dead."

Raphael nodded. The flames ate away at pine branches, popping with resin and giving birth to pale smoke that rose listlessly through the night.

"You're a brooding sort."

The statement wasn't rude or accusatory, just an observation given in the same lofty tone. Raphael felt a flash of annoyance, narrowed his eyes at the pretend spirit that didn't even know his name yet was now prying into his shell.

"You don't know me," he groused. "You don't know anything about me."

She breathed deeply, wreaths of smoke tickling her face with its grey-blue, and looked at him and spoke to him in the almost primordial voice she had spoken her first words to him in. "When you've been around… As I have… You learn a lot about life and a lot about character, and a lot about how the two interact."

Raphael snorted. "Been around, you say. I been places you ain't nevah dreamed of. Now you think just 'cause you've got your crazy notions about life, you know me inside and out?"

She shrugged, poked the white ashes with a stick. "I didn't say that."

Her passive, invasive attitude wore on his nerves, and he told her so. He gritted his teeth when she shrugged and tensed when he stood.

"I'll be back."

And he was alone, a light breeze playing with the crimson tails of his mask and pricking his exposed skin with goosebumps. He thought about leaving, about finding his bike again and riding, riding well into the dawn. No. He wasn't Leonardo. He wouldn't run away. A shadow on the edge of the firelight caught his eye- a haversack. The canvas was stiff and black with tar. The turtle bent to return the bag to its place, when he found his hands invading its confines. A long, bone-handled Bowie, a spoon and fork, a tin cup and shallow pot. He touched an oil cloth that smelled of meat, and a leather bound book- a book of poetry, according to the glimmering words that caught in the orange glow. His hand dove deeper, curling around a heavy lump of cold steel, tugging, the steel glimmering-

"Are you hungry?"

He hadn't heard her approach. The snooping ninja leapt to his feet, the bag and its contents falling with a thump. He hung his head, knew he was caught and flirted with the weak idea of apologizing. Raphael neglected the thought; the girl wasn't angry, and if she was she refused to show it. The bag slid away from him by a strap, its contents hastily thrown back into order before the oil cloth bundle was retrieved, and unwrapped to reveal a thick slab of cured bacon.

"A few reenactors know me," she spoke idly as she sliced small strips from the hunk. "They're too good to see me starve."

Raphael knew she was roping him into dinner, and fought.

"It's nice of you to offer, but I gotta go, lady."

The dawn would come quicker than he could prepare. His weary family would be stirring, rolling through the motions of a new day to find not one, but two brothers missing. The thoughts danced in his skull as his body betrayed him, plopping again by the fire to watch the bacon curl as it crisped. He was dealt five strips, the girl four, and could have inhaled them in a single crunch. But the girl ate slowly, so he ate slowly, and when they were done and his stomach still rumbled, she ignored the sound if she even heard it.

"Who are you?" She asked after a pregnant pause.

"Who are you?" Raphael countered.

"I-"

"Protect the park, I got that much," he interrupted.

"Abrielle," she amended. "My name is Abrielle."

"Raphael."

Abrielle cocked her head, studied the lines in his gleaming gold-green face and the details of his leathers and the half-hidden sai at his waist.

"I'm a runaway," she admitted.

He narrowed his eyes, ground his teeth. Runaway, huh? With a family, no doubt; a family worried and grieving in some far off broken home. And with a selfish alibi, of course; to find herself, to start over again.

"I don't like runaways," Raphael growled, leaning inward with his menacing bulk.

The woman made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat, staring him down evenly. The silence stretched for several minutes.

"I'm a ninja," his voice was almost inaudible.

A pause.

"I don't like ninjas."

To Raphael's surprise, he accepted this, this mutual dislike of one another's occupation. Abrielle stretched and let her back hit the ground. Her eyes remained open, staring mutely up at the star-sprinkled sky. Raphael had remained too long, he knew, and stood. He found his helmet, settled it back over his head and watched his thin host rise.

"Will I see you again, Raphael?" Her expression was glittering, hopeful, the face of loneliness.

No, his mind said. Never again. But the hope in her eyes tugged at him; it mirrored his own- not the hope of a friend, nor any hope he encouraged, but a hope he could not extinguish just the same. No, he repeated to himself. She was a danger to his family, and he to her livelihood. No. They had suffered enough at the hands of runaways.

"Maybe," the word fell from his lips before he could fight it, and a slow smile spread across Abrielle's plain face.

"If you return, I'll find you."

Raphael wasn't sure how to feel about the statement, backed away from the weak grin and glittering eyes and deeper into the shadows of the trees. She didn't make a move to follow him, trusted he could find his own way. She watched by the fire until he vanished, and when she turned away so did he, racing with a ninja's silence through the trees and back to his own world.


	2. The Letter

_**A/N: Here is chapter two! Hope y'all enjoy, and please-pretty please review. I don't care if it's good, bad, or ugly, I'd like to hear it.**_

* * *

"Can ya fix it or not?"

Donatello eyed his brother warily as he took the dusty laptop with ginger hands.

"You haven't used this in years, Raph," he turned it over, opened it up and grimaced at his grotesque reflection in the shattered screen. "What do you even need it for?"

"Just fix it."

Raphael stalked away, en route to the dojo. His clenched fists knocked against the sandbag hollowly, his mind four thousand miles away. A face appeared, honey eyes narrowed sternly, and the bag came loose of its hook and hit the mats with a heavy, slumping sigh. He bent to retrieve it, was halted by a warm paw on his shoulder.

"You are distracted, Raphael," the turtle turned and bowed solemnly to his sensei and remained silent. "If you don't wish to speak, perhaps you wish to fight."

Raphael considered his options, backed a pace away and bowed again. "Think ya can handle me, Sensei?"

The old rat beat him soundly- would always be able to, but the troubled terrapin left Splinter's presence in a calmer state of mind. To his brother's surprise, he joined Michelangelo for a classic horror movie marathon- they laughed together, scorned the poor quality, and smeared popcorn grease on one another in a tussle over the remote. But when their brotherly fight went unmolested, and ended without a joking reprimand from the empty section of the couch, they didn't speak of their eldest's absence: they didn't speak at all. Mike stayed up well into the night, crashed on the couch to the screams of Marilyn Burns and the buzz of a cheap chainsaw.

Raph poured a bowl of Captain Crunch, sneered when he discovered there was no milk, and retired to his room with his dry cereal. He kicked aside bike magazines, scattered tools he had yet to return to the garage, and stepped gingerly over a set of weights. The lumpy, long-abused mattress groaned under his bulk, but once he was settled the room was silent. A battered alarm clock blinked 12:37 in neon green, and the ceiling fan above wobbled as it spun. Raph's head hit the pillow sometime after two- he dreamed of shadows reeling on rooftops, and owl eyes gleaming from across the fire.

Don had the laptop fixed within the week, expressed an interest in his brother's use of the device, but didn't pry. Not directly. The local genius wasn't surprised at the list of Google searches in the computer's web history. Distance to Costa Rica. Animals and peoples of Central America. Climate, weather, and news of San Jose, Costa Rica. But the turtle frowned as he scrolled, coming upon an unexpected entry.

Gettysburg ghosts.

Civil War ghost sightings.

Missing people.

A forum of Civil War nerds- he could use the term, he decided, since he was one -arguing of the existence of a spirit that frequented Little Round Top and wandered the park on moonlit nights. Donatello snorted when one user went as far as to give it a name, and claim it wasn't a ghost at all but a kid that just enjoyed messing with people. It wouldn't be too surprising...

He heard the lair door slide shut, listened a moment to Raphael and Casey arguing about the upcoming baseball season, and hurried to stow the laptop back under the edge of his brother's bed where he had found it. Don met them in the living room, laughed, pitched in his two cents and helped himself to Michelangelo's signature lasagna- "Made with love and extra peppers!" And he tried to ignore the chair to his left that continued to gather dust.

* * *

The first letter came on the seventh of July, battered and dirty and stained with the guts of bugs and what they refused to call tears. He missed them all, sent his love along with a ton of grainy sketches, some travel brochures he had swiped, and some samples of plants and insects for Donatello to study. He had gotten sick, but was better now, hiding on the outskirts of a superstitious little village that still relied heavily on the jungle around them. He sent his love again, but refused to acknowledge how much he missed them and their cozy home beneath the city streets. The animals were curious, and awfully strange to a little city boy such as himself. He had woken once with a tree snake in his blankets- that got a laugh. He sent his love again, with orders to be happy and stay safe.

"Tell Raph to watch his temper."

Raphael hadn't stayed any longer. A couple of thugs that got too cocky wound up hospitalized after a mysterious encounter with a 'frog man,' and a small time pickpocket was found hanging by his belt above the police station fire escape, whimpering about some kind of shadow demon. Highway 78 was his lover that night, despite his misgivings. He needed out, away from the city and their old haunts; away from the incomplete family in the sewers; away from the letter that glared at him from the kitchen table.

The moon was new again, but the sky clear as it had been those months before. He wondered briefly what he was doing, fought the guilty part of his brain that goaded him with the word 'runaway, runaway.' He had hit eighty, but found himself slowing. His body screamed, buffeted as it had been for four grueling hours. It ached from his prior fights. It moaned with exhaustion. Raphael was fighting his tired eyes when the light of his headlight was broken.

The brakes screeched; the bike went down sliding, scraping the turtle along the rough asphalt until his jeans and jacket were tatters hanging from his arms and shell. The deer bounded across the highway, fell in the median with three powerful pops from the treeline.

Raphael groaned from the grass along the highway, the hot bike pressing heavily on a burning leg and sore hip. The grasses rustled, cool hands pulled his helmet away. The cool breeze blew the acrid scents of burnt rubber and blood around his exposed nose, and in the darkness he sought the owner of the hands that groped at his ruined clothes. Wide, dark eyes bore down on him, lips moving, murmuring, shouting.

"Raphael!"

His head cleared. His right arm was tingling, stinging as it bled against the gravel and sharp grass. He was vaguely aware of half his body throbbing as the pressure on his leg was eased away. He rolled, resting awkwardly on his carapace and staring up at the gleaming stars and trying to comprehend what happened to him. The girl, the runaway- Abrielle, he remembered- returned to his head, could scarcely be identified by the dark shadows cast across her face.

"What the goddamn hell was that?!" Raphael roared, rising stiffly to his knees. Abrielle inched backward, hands splayed in peace and the butt of a pistol tucked into the waistband of the dirty trousers.

She blinked at him, frowning. He thought he'd clarify.

"You chased a fucking deer out in front of me!"

She looked back to the animal still kicking in the median, stood and walked toward it stiffly with the furious reptile trailing behind.

"I'm sorry, I really am. He ran before I could get a good shot," the air exploded with a shot that ended the young buck's misery.

"It isn't even fucking deer season!" The red-masked creature wouldn't have known when deer season was if he was planted in a corn field in a ring of hunters, but he was damn well certain it wasn't in the middle of summer.

She whirled on him, "do you think I give an honest fuck when deer season is?"

Her eyes were hollow, and the bones stuck out from the wrist of the hand she planted on his plastron to push him away from her and the dead animal at her feet. The action was weak, and Raphael slapped the hand away.

"If I had the luxury of worrying about deer season, I would probably be better equipped for it," she grumbled, and grabbed the buck by his velvet antlers to drag him across the road, leaving Raphael in the bloody median.

"What about my bike?" Raph demanded, stumping after her on his bum leg.

"Bill me later."

She struggled with the deer until he brushed her aside and snatched an antler in one hand. The texture made him pause, ponder the last thoughts of the young animal with velvet spike horns.

"You fucking owe me," he growled and dragged the buck easily after her.

"I'm sorry," Abrielle's voice was much calmer. She slit the buck's throat, let the black blood spill from the warm body as she studied the turtle. "It's not like I could have kept him from crossing the road."

Raphael still glared hotly at her. "I oughtta turn you in for poaching. Make 'em send your ass home to mommy and dad and end your little adventure," he threatened, watched the girl stiffen and pale, and didn't think about how he had no room to be throwing around threats of 'the authorities' as long as he was a giant reptilian vigilante.

"Please don't," she plead in a small voice, raising shaking bloody hands in desperation. "Please!"

Raphael smirked, "ya ain't the scary little ghost now, are ya?"

Her lip averted, she broke his gaze and took the knife deftly to the hide. The ninja's adrenaline was ebbing. His bleeding arm was growing heavy, but he crossed it over the other to hide his weakness. Abrielle's shaking hands cut ugly scars in the hide as he watched her, until at last she threw the knife down and looked up at him with tears cutting tracks in the grime that covered her face.

"What?!" He cocked an eye ridge at her outburst. "Your bike isn't hurt that bad, and it sounds like you've got a pretty damn important phone call to make."

He'd never intended to turn her in anyways, wouldn't relinquish the small amount of power he held over the little human, or put his family at risk by making her join society again. She returned to butchering her kill without an answer, until the animal was skinned and quartered and glowing faintly pink in the starlight. It had been small and scrawny, and once butchered seemed a meager amount of yield for such trouble.

"Help me carry him," the voice was low and dejected, and the meat was warm in his hands as he stumbled along with the girl to her camp.

Abrielle stretched its ruined hides between a few flat stones, tossed the skull with the thin spikes aside and coaxed a small fire. She noticed his bleeding- was told to mind her own damned business, and that it was her own damn fault, but was allowed to take a look. By the firelight, her stitches were crooked but acceptable, and delivered with a gentle hand.

"I apologize," she murmured at last in her ghostly voice, her eyes hooded and downcast.

Raphael humphed, played idly with the bloody skull and felt another stab of anger at the girl and at the animal and at the world.

'Tell Raph to watch his temper.'

"Are you gonna cook any o' that damn thing or not?" She looked at him curiously, her knife halting halfway through the slab of meat she cradled.

Raph had never tasted venison, found it smoky and a bit gamey for his taste, but decent. A few dozen strips of meat curled over the fire- Abrielle would let them cook a long while to dry them completely. She was scraping the hide, had the heart and liver boiling in a small pot, sitting just within the circle of firelight.

"What brought you out here?" Raphael didn't answer, couldn't answer. He clenched his fist and felt the pull of the stitches in his arm, cursed loudly when he bit down on a bruised bullet and spat.

"How many times did you shoot that thing?" He asked instead, growling as he nursed his anger.

She accepted his refusal of her question, shrugged at him and stretched the hide again under the stones. "I shot five times. I guess I missed a couple."

She was cutting through the legs now, cutting pale tendons away from the bone. The quick glimmers of the steel in the fire brought to mind the swipe of a katana in candlelight and a triumphant laugh.

"Why don't just go home?" Raph hissed, whether it was to her or to Leonardo's memory he didn't care.

"Why are you so upset?" She stopped her cutting and stared at him with the owlish eyes.

Raph gritted his teeth, gnawed again at the morsel in his palm, cut his gaze away.

"I don't like runaways."

"Then why did you come back?"

He ignored the question. She watched him flex the three fingered hands, wondered if he had three toes as well, and pondered further on the texture of his plastron where she touched it before and what his carapace might look like beneath the ruined shirt.

"You're fatter than you used to be," her cheekbones stuck out less than those of the girl in his memory.

"July is a hot season for reenactors, as you can well imagine. I ate pretty good last weekend." She ignored the fact that the statement was abrupt, and that it had little to do with his presence in her camp.

He was quiet again, his gut burning. She stood, gave him another hunk of meat when she heard his stomach growling, double checked the stitches in his arm. He fought the infant gratitude, glared at the skinny creature in the big clothes.

"Why are you doin' this?" He snarled.

"Because I owe you," came the brisk response.

He stood, had five or six inches on the girl. "And your family? I'm sure ya owe them somethin' too!"

The owl eyes always narrowed when she drew close to him, and now they glimmered flatly. Her mouth opened and closed wordlessly for a moment before she conceded to his presence and backed down. Raphael didn't get the argument he was trying to stir. The girl didn't react as his brother would have, as he would have. His ire simmered, and he found his ruined coat where it had been discarded when his arm was treated.

"Thanks for dinner," he grumbled, feeling sore and deeply tired.

She gave a smile, but he wasn't looking, and trotted up behind him when he turned to leave.

"Will you be back?"

He cut his eyes back at her, at the fire, at the ruined hide and the haversack that held her sole possessions.

"Yeah, sure. Whatever."

And he disappeared.


	3. Not Ready

_**A/N: Hey guys! This chapter is reeeaallly late- something along the lines of fishing may or may not have kept me from writing as I should have. But it's here now. Expect the last chapter to be up by Friday (I told y'all it was gonna be short). Thanks to everyone kind enough to fave/follow/review- don't be shy out there guys! Anonymous reviews are acceptable, I just want to know what y'all think.**_

 _ **Enjoy, and don't forget to feed the author! ;)**_

* * *

 _Chapter Three: Not Ready_

He had stumbled into the lair sometime around six and barricaded himself in his room. Michelangelo was just stirring then, his mind on breakfast and his first gig, and the nervous anticipation kept him from thinking too hard about his hot-blooded brother. But it was he that first entered the garage that morning; it was he that first saw the long scrapes that cut through the body of the bike.

"Donnie!"

When the older turtle appeared he held Raphael's helmet in his hands, fighting his panic.

 _He laid the bike down._

 _But he was fine... Right?_

 _He was in his room, sleeping off his joyride._

 _But the red helmet was scarred deeply._

Donatello was blinking sleep from his eyes, fresh off his keyboard with square indents crossing his face from where he rested on the keys. He took a single look at the damaged bike and flew out of the garage to find their brother, and Michelangelo was hot on his heels. Raphael was dead asleep, his head and arm hanging over the side of the bed and halfway under his splintered nightstand. When the door slammed open and his space was invaded by the pair of panicking ninjas he stirred, cracking his skull against the lip of the nightstand and cursing caustically.

Donatello had a firm grip on his arm, observing the stitches and scrapes while their younger brother ran his mouth in a series of frantic inquiries about his health and the events of the previous night.

"What the hell is wrong with you guys?" the wounded turtle snarled, casting scathing looks toward the younger turtles.

"What happened to you last night? Who gave you these stitches?" Donatello let the battered arm slide from his hands, but his tone was firm and unyielding. Michelangelo grimaced behind him.

Raphael stared at the crooked threads that traveled down his forearm. He set his jaw.

"I put the bike down last night. Casey stitched me up," it was only half a lie, and Raph dared either of his brothers to argue.

Donatello opened his mouth to call bullshit, to remind Raph that even these sloppy stitches were neater than anything their brutish friend could deal out, but caught the meaning in his brother's narrowed eyes.

 _'Fine. I'll play your game,'_ and he matched Raphael's glare.

Don kept his mouth diplomatically shut as he checked Raphael for a concussion, for infection, and with a cool order to come to his lab after a few hours' rest so he could check the wounds again, Donatello stalked out of the room.

"You sure you're okay, bro?" Mike asked, lingering at the foot of the bed. "I've got breakfast-I mean… I've got that birthday party at nine, but… but if you need anything…?"

His words petered out, but his brother's glare softened. "No thanks Mikey. 'M fine. Save some bacon for me?"

Mikey nodded, turned away, his eyes downcast and avoiding the half-guilty stare of his big bro.

Raph had forgotten Mike's new job, despite having ragged on him for weeks about it.

"Good luck, Cowabunga Carl," Raphael snarked good-naturedly as the youngest Hamato brother slipped back out of the room and down to the kitchen.

The wounded turtle groaned as the door shut. Splinter would be in within moments. Don knew his story was full of shit. He didn't have the energy for this.

Splinter gave him a long, hard lecture on responsibility, on caution, on discipline. Throughout his sermon the old rat's eyes spoke of worry, and of loss. Raphael tried not to grind his teeth as he avoided the disappointment in his father's gaze.

Donatello was his next hurdle: after calling Casey and telling the human on no uncertain terms to play along with Raphael's fiction, the red-banded ninja made his way to the lab. Don regarded him with an icy stare, his eyes heavy with exhaustion and hands wrapped around a large thermos of what could only be a liquid heart attack waiting to happen. He was ushered into a cluttered table, watched as his brother took a deep swig of coffee and snatched his medical bag from under his desk.

"You really should have cleaned this out better," Raphael couldn't reply through his gritted teeth as Don reopened the wound and set about cleaning it properly. He held up a long bloody splinter with a questioning look in his bloodshot eyes. Raph dared him to make an accusation.

When the wound was clean, closed again in Donatello's precise stitches- and if his brother's hand hadn't been as gentle as Abrielle's, Raphael kept his mouth firmly shut- and the nastier scrapes along his arm and leg smeared in an antiseptic salve, he accepted Don's hand in helping him off the table. The resident doctor's grip tightened severely as he tried to walk away. There was a world of emotion in the dusky brown of his eyes- a warning, a request, and something else so near to their father's disappointment that Raphael found himself scowling hatefully up at his taller brother.

"Just be more careful next time," Donatello warned, and his eyes softened, "and get some rest."

Raphael returned to half a dozen texts and two missed calls: Casey demanding an explanation for the lies he was told to tell. The turtle sighed, rubbed a hand against his aching head and cast his bed a loving look before sending a single reply.

 _"Tell ya 2nite."_

Raphael was sore when he woke from his deep sleep, and shoved away the clock and its blinking 6:45 that stabbed at his eyes. Another half dozen texts lit up his phone- Casey had told April, and Raphael groaned, rolled over, and contemplated sleeping for the next ten years of his life. But the young ninja sat up, snatched his mask from where he'd tossed it carelessly against his nightstand.

The lair was quiet, a surprising discovery for so early in the evening. Raph heard an electric hum from Donatello's lab, and smelled the incense burning from Splinter's private quarters. He entered the dim kitchen, was surprised to find his youngest brother sprawled across the old table. His pale green arms were glowing with fresh bruises and his eyes were tightly shut.

"Mikey? What happened?" The freckled head shot up with a sharp gasp. His face, at least, was untouched.

Seeing it was only a brother, Mike relaxed and laid his head back down over his crossed arms. "Kids," the young turtle croaked. "Those kids are freakin' violent, dude."

Raph smirked at the younger turtle, but the expression wasn't totally unsympathetic. He clapped a hand on Mike's shoulder- right over a bruise to the weary terrapin's discomfort, snagged an apple off the counter and turned on his heel to leave.

"You're not gonna stay and have dinner?"

Mike's question halted him in the kitchen doorway. He turned, torn by the pleading eyes, and gave an apologetic half smile.

"Sorry Mike, I'll join ya tomorrow," and he strode away before he could hear his baby brother's sigh.

From the fire escape Raphael watched his friends. April paced, her nose turned up in a crinkle that expressed her concern and displeasure. Case seemed far calmer, his slouch nonchalant in the cushioned leather couch; but his tapping foot, and the stray hockey puck he tossed stiffly from hand to hand revealed that he, too, was worried for the red-masked ninja.

"Raph!"

They worried over his stitches, the scrapes, patted his shell and punched him lightly to relieve the nervous tension. They asked, and he told them-everything. He spoke, his voice flat and controlled, of the rides, of the park. He talked about the runaway, and he spat the word as he said it but couldn't banish the image of her hopeful, owlish eyes that gleamed in the fire. He told them about the deer, about laying the bike down and getting stitched up. And he swore them to secrecy.

"So I have to lie to your whole family," Casey was half amused and half insulted, and both were relieved that their friend's plight was not serious. "Because you found a girlfriend?"

April slapped him on the shoulder. "Have you not tried to tell her to go home?"

Raphael broke off the glare he'd directed toward his best friend, and bit back his denial to answer the woman. "It ain't none of my business what she does," and he looked hard at the tall man that stood behind her, "because she's not my girlfriend."

"Is she pretty?" Casey cooed mockingly, earning another slap.

"No," Raph growled. "She's skinny an' half starved an' her hair is short and matted and Lord knows what color it used to be," but the owl eyes smiled at him in the back of his mind, and he sighed. "I didn't ask ya to make fun o' me, I asked if you'd keep your mouths shut and just cover for me."

Casey was silenced by the turtle's angry outburst, and April pushed him slightly away.

"We're sorry Raph," she gave the man a pointed glare and turned back to the turtle. "We'll cover for you- this time." She matched his frown. "Raph, you don't know why this girl is running- bad people aren't just big men in sharp suits or tattooed thugs on the street."

Raphael sensed the same warning that had been ground into his mind since infancy, and stopped the woman's lecture with a deep scowl. April ignored the blazing amber eyes and gave a scowl of her own. They engaged in a silent stare down, and started strong though the turtle's superior will power forced the other to concede.

April's green eyes softened, and she gave a final plea. "Just be careful, Raph. And if do see her again," he expected the typical warnings of keep your guard up or eyes peeled, and was surprised at the woman's words. "Take the kid something to eat, alright?"

Raphael snorted and smirked, agreed he would do so- if he ever went back.

* * *

The following months passed in an uncertain blur: some time with this brothers and friends, but more time alone. His sleep pattern was erratic at best, and more than once did his father or a brother wake to find him in the dojo at ungodly hours. More often than not they found him absent. In sleazy bars and under the pale protection of streetlamps the city thugs would whisper and talk bravado against the lone vigilante; but when they crossed through dark alleys or found themselves alone on a dimly lit side of town they would hasten their step, and their quivering hands never strayed from their weapons. They called him demon, freak, and more recently The Nightwatcher.

With a suit of leather and steel- Donatello wasn't the only mutant turtle good with his hands -Raphael terrorized the criminal core of the city. With a suit of leather and steel, Raphael made his name. The Nightwatcher was not born in a night, in the glimmer of streetlights on sai- he was carved painstakingly from a prison of stone; and on the night he at last stood free in the hazy glow of a raucous streetclub's neon lights, The Nightwatcher again found himself teasing the fickle wiles of the westbound highway.

 _"I thought I was in command while Fearless was gone," his gaze was so intense and he spat the nickname with such a vile sense of hatred that Donatello had visibly flinched, and closed his dusky eyes with a wide frown._

The cavity of his chest was eerily weightless. His heart fluttered within its cage slowly, almost dumbly, in the slow but steady roll of a man in space. Raphael's stomach squirmed, and for once he longed not to outride life's challenges or meet them head in with snarls and clenched fists.

 _"How can you be expected to lead your brothers," Splinter's voice was the knell of death, "if you are as lost to them as Leonardo?"_

 _Leonardo._ That final blow had tossed his heart in the icy dark waters to drown. The hated picture of the stern honey eyes and blue bandana creased in a furrowed frown brought a growl to his lips.

 _"I ain't Leo," he had snarled, and the disapproving frowns struck his heart with deeper meaning._

 _"I ain't as good as Leo."_

He kept a steady pace, slightly slower than the speed limit, his head empty and eyes unseeing.

The bike sputtered as he killed it. He sat back, the steel and chrome of the bike winking at him in the glow of the full moon. He half expected at any moment to behold the orange gleam of a ghostly lantern, but the forest beyond the road was silent and dark. Raphael stowed his bike in the ditch alongside the road, leapt for the cover of trees as a pair of headlights flashed. The armored turtle watched the semi trundle by with the mute detachment that had driven him, then turned, shouldering his loaded saddlebags and pressing through the brambles.

A shy bobcat bolted across his path, and a small owl cooed hauntingly at him as he passed. In a field glowing with silver moonbeams he spied one-two-three deer with wide racks balanced upon their stately heads. Raph took his helmet off, breathed the cool, fresh air, and listened closely for the soft stamp of booted feet. The owl cried at him again, took off and winged away as a silent shadow through the canopy of trees. He watched it, lips pressed in a firm line. A twig snapped.

"Abrielle?"

A possum stared dumbly up at him, it's stark face twisted into the mad grin its species had borne since their creation. It tramped away on fat, stumpy legs and didn't look back. Raphael was left alone again, not knowing which path to take in the dark maze. His keen eyes sought the elusive glow of a campfire: he was disappointed. Denial of defeat led him from one covered trace to another, taking him deeper, ever deeper into the realm of moaning trees and sighing winds.

 _"Raph-ai-el. Raph-ai-Raph-ai-el,"_ the owl was back and taunting him, lighting in his path.

 _"Raph-ai-el."_ In a tone like his father.

 _"Raph-ai-el."_ In a tone like his brother.

"Raphael," he lashed out soundly, and the body so close to him crumpled to the ground with a wheeze. Raph blinked, cursed, and lifted the frail woman from the ground.

"What the hell was that?" His grip on her elbow was tight, and he drew her menacingly close. She scowled at him and struggled but her resistance went unrewarded.

"I was going home, and-"

"Home?" He echoed, dropping the thin arm.

"Back. To. Camp." She told him slowly, decisively," and I saw you."

She crossed her arms over her tender stomach where he hit her, backed away from his bulk with a look akin to fear that should have stirred the cooling embers of his anger. But he shivered, pierced by the owl eyes, turned his gaze to the path before him where the real bird had disappeared. Had it been real?

"You're always so angry when you come here," she growled at his expression, though her voice was strained and soft.

Raphael let his glare melt.

"I'm always angry, period." He thought he'd let her know.

She humphed at him, beckoned him down a thin path that circumvented the field of deer, and up through the hills to where she camped. They were silent, Raphael glaring at the matted head- without the pleading eyes upon him now, he could remember to hate her, to hate all breeds of runaways. Abrielle struck a fire almost lazily, and sat back to eye him over the flames. He remembered the weight of his saddlebags on his shoulders- remembered his promise to April if not his own compassion.

"How've you been?" He threw the bags down, traced the rough planes of her hollow face with a critical eye.

She seemed surprised at his question, blinked at him with lips pursed skeptically.

"You just gonna sit there and blink at me, Owlie?"

She didn't answer. He kicked the bags toward her, and she crept cautiously toward them, never taking her wide eyes off of him.

"For someone who hates runaways," her hands wrapped around the leather. She dared to glance down. "You're always coming back to one."

He pushed away a flash of memory, the image of prim but shaking handwriting that joked about ants and a shortage of food, and watched the fine hands dive into the depths of the bags. She pulled out a can, two, dropped them and found more and clenched her jaw as she looked back up at him. He saw the quiver of her lip.

"I don't like charity," it was the ghost of a whisper, and the owl eyes were shining.

Raphael stood, threw a finger at the other bag as he approached her. "Shut up and check the other bag."

He heard the grind of her teeth, crossed his arms. More food, a knife- the last he'd seen her with had been pitiful- a book of old poems he had thought was disgustingly boring but was one of April's favorites. She muffled a sob, lunged to her feet and wrapped her arms tightly around his middle and cried. Raphael's body seized, his arms flying up and hanging there.

"Thank you," the words were scarcely audible against his covered plastron.

"Easy, easy," he responded, not quite returning the embrace but patting the woman's knotty elbows. "God, you're acting like Mikey."

She fell away from him, embarrassed, and back to the bags. His last comment was meant to be unheard, but still she asked. He hesitated. The silence stretched. He sat near the fire, stirring the embers with a thin stick. The eyes, dark and gleaming, bore into him. Waiting. He answered. The narrative of his existence went uninterrupted: he told her of Don and Mike, of Splinter, of April and Casey.

"And the runaway?"

He had fallen silent, his gloved hands balling in his lap.

"I've got two brothers," the admission gained Raphael's attention. "Our family liked to travel- I studied in Rome for a year. I used to speak Italian my roommate would call me Alexandria Andrews, because she didn't like my first name." She paused, gauged his interest. "Now I'm just a runaway."

He expected more, but didn't get it.

"Who is your runaway?"

"Leonardo." The name fell from his lips before he could fight it. "My older brother."

She accepted the bitter words with a small nod, her owl eyes searching his face.

"Why don't you just go home?" Raphael demanded hotly, bristling under her stare.

He watched her fleeting expressions, his vexation smoldering and amber eyes dangerously cold. She finally adopted a mask not unlike his own.

"Why doesn't your brother?"

He could have struck her. He would have struck her. Her sharp features would have collapsed under the force of his fists, and he would have left her bleeding and wounded to die. But the question had him frozen, his heart pausing its beat and breath stilling. His mouth fell open, then closed again, the words of anger and offense halting before his tongue.

"Maybe we're not ready."

The breath rushed back to him then, the coals of his ire doused in the soft spoken words. He stood, distanced himself from the girl and her fire, grabbed his helmet but left his saddlebags.

"See ya."


	4. Three Words

_**A/N: It's here, the last chapter! I'm excited. This is the FIRST multi-chapter doc I have ever finished. Yes I know it's short. Still counts! Anyways, thanks everyone for reading/favoriting/following, and especially reviewing! I'll be working for the next while on the sequel, which will be posted as soon as I have a few chapters written and everything blocked out. It'll have some action, I promise.**_

 _ **I hope you all enjoyed, and please review!**_

* * *

 _Chapter Four: Three Words_

The icy crystal cloud hung suspended before his lips. His breath caught tight in his throat, his teeth set against their chattering.

 _Christmas put a foul taste in Raphael's mouth. His family had risen, strung the sprawling lair in tinsel and winking lights, and the air was permeated with the aroma of gingerbread and sugar cookies in the oven. The scents, the colors, the orbs and twinkling trinkets that graced the tree all blurred and stirred a twinge of nausea in the turtle's gut. He rubbed sleep from his eyes, avoided glancing at the wall of stockings lest he find one missing, and lumbered into the kitchen. He found it empty._

The thin chest rose slowly, shakily, and fell.

 _Raphael backtracked, traced his way through the living room, finding only silence and a bauble that fell loose from the tree. The red-clad ninja bent, swiped the ornament up in his three fingered hand. He bit his lip and narrowed his eyes, grip tightening on the delicate creation so that a slim crack split down one side. He relaxed, let out a breath, hung the ornament quickly and backed away from the mute sparkling tree. It danced on the thin limb, blurring the four young faces sloppily painted upon it. Raphael turned away._

He sank to his knees, the snow crunching under his weight and the cold slowly seeping through his jeans.

 _The lair door slid open- enter Donatello bundled tight against the cold. He reached up a gloved hand, slid a frosty scarf from over his mouth and shivered as the feeling sank back into his bones. He saw his older brother and frowned, shrugging offa heavy topcoat and sliding a beanie off his domed head._

 _"Looks like someone decided to wake up," the brainiac's teeth chattered with the statement._

 _Raphael ignored it, crossed his arms. "Where have you been?"_

 _Don raised an eyeridge, silently questioning the older turtle's right to make such demands, but answered. "April's- but she and Case have already left to spend Christmas with her family."_

 _Raph nodded. "And Mike?"_

 _Donatello didn't reply, but took his disrobing to the safety of his lab. Raphael followed, growing uneasy._

 _"Where'd Mikey go, Don?"_

 _The ordinarily soft dusky eyes were flinty as Donatello turned to face his pursuing brother._

 _"The post office."_

An early owl hooted once, and ghosted away.

 _Michelangelo returned distraught, immediately set to cooking and blared his music from the kitchen to save himself the trouble of thought. The third time he burnt himself, the youngest brother fled to the solace of his room and left the tinny and crackling radio to play. The fourth remix of Jingle Bell Rock ended abruptly when Donatello stalked from his lab and gutted the vile machine. Lunch, with its almost cold spaghetti, was tense despite Master Splinter's attempts at comforting his sons._

 _"Abrielle?" The cracked blue lips parted, moved with a thin wheeze._

 _"I miss Leo," Michelangelo's voice cracked. He feigned disinterest, pushing the noodles around with a tarnished silver fork with one bent prong._

 _The eating stopped. Raphael pushed away from the table, ignored the chorus of sighs that followed his movement._

 _His room was dark but for the solitary green blinking of his hated clock. The sickly light shadowed the lump n his bed. No Nightwatcher today: he slid on a pair of jeans, the patched jacket and gloves they'd liberated two years before from a donation bin in the shadow of a second hand snagged his helmet, stowed the parcel beneath his sweatshirt and stamped to the garage without a word._

 _It was early to be topside, but the streets were empty. The sky overhead was dark and heavy, promising a white Christmas in the next hours. Out west, the snow was already on the ground._

Her uncanny ability to find him was something vaguely supernatural to Raphael. He wrote it off as a mystery and opted not to question it. But when the highway was clear, and the bike concealed, and the turtle's agitation was fixed with a familiar churn in his gut, there wasn't a whisper from the frost-imprisoned forest.

"R-Raphael?"

He gathered her in his arms. She weighed nothing. She hadn't the energy for even her teeth to chatter, and her owl's eyes were half closed against the snow that danced abroad. She hadn't found him this time.

His hands were trembling, from the cold, or from the icy fear that was born in the pit of his heart and carried to his furthest extremities by its frantic beating. She was stiff as a board, curled tight in a ball that did little to expel the cold, didn't relax against his warmth like he hoped she might.

He demanded she speak, but her parted lips were still.

He demanded she move, even a twitch against the matted hair that fell into her eyes, but the movement of her chest grew fainter, fainter.

He was running, the girl wrapped tight in is overcoat and the glacial air cutaneous perched him through his red sweatshirt. He was on the bike, cradling the little runaway, looking both ways and lost on which direction to take. The town. He cursed, couldn't drive as fast as he liked, as fast as he needed to. Her skin grew red, blistered around the sharp planes of her face.

He killed the bike, leapt off and let it fall. Outside the red brick building he paused. He pulled up his scarf, pulled the almost crunchy hood of his sweatshirt down over his eyes.

The nurses rushed through the waiting room in a panic- orders for the doctor, for a gurney, for whatever else could be done for a skeletal girl in a hypothermal stupor. Raphael, the bulky, mysterious stranger, was forgotten in an instant- and he had vanished by the time they turned around. He paced a dark janitor's closet, keen ears tuned to the murmur outside. Questions about the girl, about her condition- did she still live?- circulated with musings about the big man, the man hiding his face, the man who melted into the shadows before their eyes. The doorknob jiggled. Raphael froze, sought a place to hide, looked up and found the air vent.

The turtle spent an hour wandering the shafts; an hour marked by a deep worry that set his teeth on edge; an hour when the owl eyed little runaway he always tried- and failed- to hate became his dying little friend. Something more than a friend. Something just deeper than friendship drove Raphael from one wing of the hospital to the next. He found the maternity ward and the nursery full of sleeping infants, the lunchroom, the morgue- and he held his breath and prayed to a deity he scarcely believed in that he wouldn't come upon the bloodless face of the girl. The sight of the emergency department spurred his determination; he peeked into the room of a boy getting his stomach sewn shut, of a woman getting x rays on a clearly broken arm.

He found her.

She was stripped of her frozen and threadbare clothes, wrapped in a thin hospital gown that swallowed her thin body. A doctor called out her body temperature- a number that seemed so mild but was fifteen degrees too close to death. The heart monitor blipped unevenly, a nurse fitted a stand with an IV and slipped a needle into the thin and frozen arm. They stripped the gown, cut deep incisions in her abdomen, ran a tube through that hooked up to a bag of some nondescript fluid. Minutes passed. Hours. Raphael's arms and knees were stiff and aching from maintaining his position in the space hardly tall and wide enough for his covered shell. The owl eyes slid open.

"Can you hear me?" Asked the short, balding doctor from her bedside. She couldn't turn, cut her eyes in his direction and her head twitched minutely. "You almost didn't make it."

A slow blink. He couldn't read her expression.

"The man who brought you here disappeared. Will you tell me your name?"

She frowned, a hardly visible turn of the chapped lips.

"We need to contact your family."

Her head shook- she was gaining control again.

"Please, ma'am, we only want to help you."

She stared at him long and hard.

"Abrielle Alexandria Andrews. The runaway." Her voice was cracked, almost inaudible.

An hour later there were cameras, reporters, people in fine suits that pretended to know her every thought and every motive; Raphael had slipped out to hide his bike, returned to his perch in the air vent to see a sharp dressed man in slicked black hair standing by the bed of a girl he had never seen so clean.

"I have nothing to say," her voice was stronger now, in the lofty spirit tone he hadn't heard from her since that fateful first encounter in April.

The man tried to argue, but he and his cameras were ushered out by a hefty nurse who wouldn't take any shit. The room was then abandoned, the only light from the blinking monitors and a harsh white lamp. Abrielle's eyes were drooping, and she lacked the energy to flinch when the mutant turtle dropped from the vent.

"Abrielle?" He approached her side, taking care not to touch the multiple tubes and wires linking her to the humming machines.

She looked at him wearily, cracked the barest of smiles.

"You saved me," her voice was rough again, and he sought the tall cup of water she'd been given earlier.

She drank deeply, and he smirked at her but his stare was hot with worry. "Don't scare me like that again, kid."

Her lip trembled. "The media's got me now."

He remembered the cameras, the reporters, the self proclaimed professionals of human psychology.

"What was with all the monkey suits?" He was sitting cross legged at her feet now with his heavy boots kicked off under the bed.

"I was gone for two years," she answered slowly. "They've been looking for me the whole time."

"Well why the hell did you leave?" His old anger returned long enough to snarl the demand before it simmered.

She smiled a watery smile, and whispered, "I used to have _three_ brothers."

Raphael pretended not to hear her, picked idly at his woolen socks. She leaned forward gingerly, grabbed his gloved hand. He met her eyes, shining a golden hazel ringed with green, and realized he'd never known what color they were.

"Thank you for coming," she breathed, and wrapped her arms tight around his neck.

He resisted briefly, but found himself welcoming and returning the embrace. Her hands traced the cool scutes of his plastron just under the lip of his sweatshirt. Raph laid her back against the pillows, disentangled her arms and flashed her a crooked smile.

Abrielle chanced a glance out the window at the darkening sky, frowning again. "They found me."

He frowned at her, but remained silent. The nurses had worked long and hard at her hair, and the clean, light locks curled around her chin and fell into her eyes when she looked at him again.

"I'm not ready to be found, Raphael."

He gritted his teeth, swallowed, avoided her gaze. "Maybe you don't have to be."

He felt a forgotten pressure against his plastron, pulled out the parcel wrapped in butcher paper and unwrapped it to reveal a thick woolen trencher.

"We can get you bundled up," he bunched the fabric in his hands. "You can come with me."

She tugged at the trencher, held it up above her chest and shoulders, shook her head with deep sad eyes. "I can't." Her voice cracked. "It's too late."

She tried to give the garment back, but it was pushed back into her hands.

"Merry Christmas then."

Her sorrowful grin contorted with tears. "I don't celebrate Christmas, Raphael."

His large hands fell over hers. "Then... Make it goodbye," Raphael struggled over those three words than he ever had against a physical enemy. His little friend was crying now, her grip on the coat loosening as fatigue claimed her body.

"I'll find you again," she promised in a whisper.

"You do that," he found himself choking on a lump in his throat. He patted her hand- warm now, and clean. "Goodbye Abrielle."

And he kissed her, very softly, his cool lips ghosting over her forehead as she drifted away. The window slid quietly shut, rending the solitary sphere of the mutant and the runaway with its thin, but certain finality. She would be on her way home soon- sooner than she could prepare for. Raphael was already gone.


End file.
